Chiarelli not afraid to move high profile Oilers

It took two miserable years and 105 losses to bring Taylor Hall and Nail Yakupov to Edmonton, and just over three months for Peter Chiarelli to ship both of them out.

The Oilers general manager knew when he got here that fixing Edmonton’s spiralling rebuild would require gutting some major parts, and he isn’t been the least bit shy about getting it done.

“He isn’t and that’s probably a good thing,” said Chiarelli’s first order of business in the summer of 2015, head coach Todd McLellan. “Insanity is sticking with what you’ve always done and ending up with the same results, especially if they’re negative.

“He hasn’t been afraid to go out and make some moves, he’s been aggressive with it.”

Of the five players who were once considered cornerstones of the rebuild – Hall, Yakupov, Justin Shultz, Jordan Eberle and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – only Eberle and Nugent-Hopkins are left.

If there was any sense among any players other than Conner McDavid that their place in Edmonton is a sure thing, it’s gone. Chiarelli has made it known that from now on if you’re not part of the solution, you won’t be part of the Oilers.

“There is no fear to make those changes,” said McLellan. “So step up and perform or who knows what will happen.”

While he’s made more bold moves in 18 months than fans in Edmonton saw in the previous eight years, Chiarelli says pulling the trigger on something big, or unpopular, is not about guts, but rather a simple belief that it’s the right move at the right time.

“We try and address issues, we try and address needs, then you try and fix them,” he said. “So sometimes hard decisions (have to be made). Yes, we’ve traded profile players since I’ve been here, but I know it’s for the betterment of the team. We want to make the playoffs, we want to win the Stanley Cup.

“We have some good young players and that’s part of the recipe and part of the reason I’m in this chair, to make those decisions.”

The decision on Yakupov essentially made itself. The move for a prospect and a third round draft pick is essentially addition by subtraction – freeing up roster space and money and eliminating a distraction who wasn’t bringing anything to the table other that four-year-old draft status.

“At the end of the day we decided that Nail needed a fresh start,” said Chiarelli, who isn’t sure why Yakupov became the biggest draft bust since Patrik Stefan. “I don’t know if it’s fair for me to assess why it didn’t work out from just looking at one year, but I could see there wasn’t a fit.

“He’s a young player who had skill and talent, but from what I saw the year before to what I saw this past year, I thought his game diluted. I didn’t think he was playing to his strengths. There are areas of his game that can improve and need to improve and I’ll leave it at that.”

McLellan, who never felt really confident in handing Yakupov the kind of ice time he wanted, agreed the kid’s game was already in a serious decline and he wasn’t able to save it under the new regime.

“By the time we had arrived here it was infected already. He had a lot of the past baggage that he was carrying with him. We tried to get him going and it worked for a while with Connor, then both their injuries derailed that.

“People wonder why didn’t we put him back there… but Ebs created a bond with Connor that we thought was going to be better, it’s as simple as that.

“But what’s really important to understand is the players who’ve left here don’t shoulder any blame. It’s the group as a whole. That’s not on them, it’s on all of us, everyone who’s been part of the organization for the past decade.”

The players who are still here understand better than anyone why the changes had to be made.

“That goes with losing,” said Eberle. “We haven’t exactly done great in the last little bit here. Over the last little bit we’ve talked about who’s leaving, but who’s coming? Who are we bringing in to improve our team.”

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